


Storyteller

by Daxolotl



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/F, First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Midvale (Supergirl TV 2015), Needles, Storytelling, Teen Romance, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21874528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daxolotl/pseuds/Daxolotl
Summary: Alex isn't sure exactly when Kara started asking her for stories. But it's a tradition now - one they both like. And sometimes, she creates stories all of her own.
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Kara Danvers
Comments: 11
Kudos: 155
Collections: Secret Kalex Santa 2019





	Storyteller

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Argyle_S](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle_S/gifts).



> _This is my Secret Kalex Santa gift for argyle_s! I know you love Midvale stories, and you mentioned that in your prompts so...this is the idea that hit me when I was thinking about Midvale a lot. I hope you enjoy it!_
> 
> _Oh - and I put a few self-indulgent references to my other works in there, since this whole story is a little bit meta. You get bonus points if you spot them all. :P_

"Long ago, far before humans had cars or telephones or anything really more advanced than a printing press, there existed a bold and daring princess. Her parents insisted that she must follow their rules and restrictions, but she knew that if only the world was more accepting of her abilities, she could change things for the better. She was impetuous, but with good reason. 

"Because, you see, she was a genius. She was wiser than her years would suggest - wiser than anyone else in the whole wide world. She believed she could change the whole world - and help her kingdom to become a greater, more prosperous --"

"Why does it have to be a kingdom? Can't it be a queendom?"

"It can't be a queendom because that isn't a word in English, Kar. And I know, I know, it's sexist and misogynist, well done, you've successfully summed up human history."

"But this is your story! Make it be a queendom! Or, ooh! A republic!"

Alex glances at the alien girl curled up against her, atop her bed. She quirks an eyebrow, waiting for Kara to realise why that plan won't quite work. When Kara doesn't seem to be getting any closer, Alex provides an answer. "But the hero's a princess."

Kara, for her part, just shrugs. "So? Make the royalty be figureheads without real power, like how England does it. So that way she's held back by the expectations of not really doing anything at all."

"Hey! This is my story, yeah? You asked me to tell you a story so I'm telling it. If I wanted a pesky alien backseat storyteller I'd have asked for one."

Kara pouts, harrumphing dramatically.

Damn it. No. Alex won't give in that easily. She won't. She won't, she won't...

"Fine. The princess of the _republic_ of Keltoria--"

"Can't be Keltoria. There's a planet called Keltor. They have dogs made out of metal."

Alex makes a frustrated noise, and a moment later there's a knock at their bedroom door.

"It's open!" Alex calls, thankful for the interruption from her mother for a change. It saves her from this annoying, pesky, difficult alien.

Eliza opens the door and pokes her head in. When she spots the two of them, Kara curled against Alex with a head resting on her shoulder, she smiles. Alex knows she's been happy the two of them have managed to get back to how they had been to begin with. Her mom's been pretty obvious with her praise of how happy she is to see the two of them getting along like they had been before Dad died - Alex just wishes it hadn't taken another death for them to get back on track.

"Money's on the counter if you two need to order a pizza or three - no partying while I'm out, okay? Be good, and I'll be back later."

Alex rolls her eyes. "Yes, Mom, we'll definitely be partying in the eight hours you're at a xenobiologist society thing. I keep telling you, you could've just got a hotel room and stayed overnight."

Eliza levels a flat look at her. "And have you _definitely_ organise a party while I'm gone?"

"No!" Alex denies, affronted. "I just think it's stupid that you're going all the way to National City and all the way back here in one night, just for a stupid three-hour dinner. You won't even be back until like 2am." Alex genuinely does think it's just stupid. She isn't exactly a social butterfly at the moment, and the idea of partying leaves her cold. At most she'd have invited Vicki over, and...they've been in a weird place recently, anyway.

But, her complaints fall on deaf ears. Eliza levels an accusatory look at Alex that she can't withstand despite her total innocence. "Be good, you two. Don't pester each other."

Alex throws her hands up, looking between her mom and Kara. "Do we look like we're pestering each other?!"

Kara pokes Alex in the side hard enough to hurt, and smiles when Alex yelps. "Have a safe journey, Eliza."

Eliza laughs and waves. "Goodnight, Alex, goodnight, Kara. You'd both better be asleep by the time I get home."

"Bye, Mom."

_ _ _

Alex isn't sure exactly when Kara started asking her for stories. But it was early on. Before Jeremiah...before all of that happened.

_Alex, tell me a story._

_Uuugh, fine. Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there were seven dwarves._

At first, it had...been escapism, Alex could tell even then. The universe was so cruel and so cold, and Kara needed somewhere safe from it all. Alex had been that escape. Sharing the stories she knew from her childhood, and any others that were in the common canon. Retelling Disney movies became a pretty standard favourite.

_Alex, tell me a story._

_Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,  
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity._

_Pfft. Not that impressive. I can do that too._

_Are you the Napoleon of Crime?_

_I might be. Who's Napoleon?_

Eventually, it stopped being about escapism, and started being about belonging. Kara needed to know Human pop culture and history to be able to fit in properly - and learning the stories was a great way to do that. It told her about the things that were common knowledge - the things that everyone else learned during their first thirteen years on Earth.

_Alex, tell me a story!_

_Okay, uh... Once, there was a king of England, called Henry the VIII. And he was famous, even in his own lifetime, for marrying over and over again._

After Jeremiah died, it...stopped. For a long time. Until they worked together to investigate Kenny's murder.

It had just been a couple of weeks afterwards. Alex and Kara were close - inseparable, again, after so long being distant. And, falteringly, Kara had asked.

_Alex? Can you, um...would you mind telling me a story?_

_...I think we ran through all the pop culture ones. I guess I could start telling you stories of all the horror movies you refuse to watch, but..._

_No!! Uh...can you....make one up for me?_

And so, Alex had.

(She's always been terrible about not giving Kara what she wants.)

She'd grumbled the whole time, and complained that the story was probably crap and full of inconsistencies, and Kara had taken control over the storyline when Alex had killed off a character Kara liked, but...

But it was nice.

_ _ _

"Where was I?"

"The princess of the republic!"

"I think that's where _you_ were, miss controls-the-narrative."

"Semantics."

"Semantics are very important in storytelling, I'll have you know. But, fine. Sitting comfortably?"

"Uh huh!"

"Good. I'm glad you're crushing my boob for a good cause. Its sacrifice will be remembered. Okay, so. Once upon a time, blah blah, there was a princess of the republic of Middlevalley. And yes, that name is super imaginative, don't critique my process."

"I wasn't going to say anything."

"Of course you weren't. Okay. The princess of Middlevalley was wise and brave and knew she could do more, if only her parents allowed her to achieve her goals, rather than simply being a figurehead of their kingdom."

"Queendom."

"Kingdom. She had great visions of the future, of technology that could make people's lives better. Of inventions never before dreamed of. But, stifled as she was, there was no way she could ever reach her potential."

"So she ran away?"

"Even better. She created an alter-ego."

"What's an alter-ego? That isn't translating right in my head. It sounds like...adjusting one of the three pillars of personality?"

"Pfft. No. It's like your cousin being Superman. It's a secret identity."

"Then why didn't you just say secret identity?"

"Because words have meaning!"

_ _ _

It's always been like this.

Silly. Ridiculous. Disjointed and messy and fumbling.

A five minute story could take Alex all night to tell, with the interjections and conversation the two of them like to have. It just...it feels comfortable. It feels nice. Kara seems to forget about the world for a little while, and forget about her troubles. And Alex...

Alex relaxes. Everything Alex is stressing herself by thinking too much about (and, more importantly, everything Alex is stressing herself by _avoiding_ thinking about at all) falls away. It's just her, and the girl she's most comfortable with, and pure creation.

_ _ _

"She created an alter-ego: Lexie Grey. At first she wanted to call herself Doctor Lexie Grey, but she respected the field of science too much to claim a doctorate that she hadn't earned. She's an obstinate princess, not an asshole."

"In my experience, someone can very easily be both."

"I can't imagine who you're talking about," Alex says, obstinately.

"Uh huh. I'm sure."

"I'm glad you're sure, because when I'm telling these stories they require total trust from my listeners."

"Listeners? You make it sound like you've got a crowd."

"I'm secretly a world-famous poet. Haven't you seen my notebook that's covered in thorns?"

"Oh, hah hah. I understood that reference. Carry on with the Rao-damned story."

"You're mean, you know that? You're a mean girl, and nobody else sees it except for me. They all think you're cute and innocent but I know the truth and the truth is that you're mean to your sister."

Kara pouts until Alex kisses the top of her head, then burrows back against her chest to hear the rest of the story.

"Okay, so. The princess used what influence she had to establish a reputation for her alter-ego - and the supplies to match. The right rumors in the right ears, the right royal coin in the wrong non-royal hands, and she had herself a workshop. Slowly, very slowly, she began to make all the things she'd dreamed of. She couldn't work as fast as she wanted, for fear of drawing the attention of her parents too soon."

Kara's listening intently now, the back-and-forth between them settling down for the moment. Leaving Alex free to craft whatever story it is she's working on today. If she's being honest, she has no idea where she's taking the story of a self-insert inventor princess philanthropist. But Kara seems to be enjoying it, and that's what matters to her.

That's always what matters to her.

"But all that changed--"

"When the fire nation attacked?"

"Uuuugh, I new you were gonna reference that dumb new TV show."

"If you didn't want me to reference it, you shouldn't have phrased it like that."

Alex jabs Kara in the side again.

"Ow!"

"Don't be a baby." Alex rolls her eyes. "Anyway. As I was saying, everything changed the fateful day that someone new walked into her workshop. Someone she hadn't seen in so, so many years. Someone she never expected to see again."

_ _ _

Kara's a sucker for a romantic plotline. She always has been. Alex knows that, and likes to throw romances into her stories to keep Kara's interest piqued. And, y'know, because she likes it. Who the romance is never really matters. It's always just another guy. Generically handsome, with tousled hair and a broad smile and whatever else came to her in the moment. Boring and safe, and the sort who Kara always falls for.

It's easy. It's a little formulaic, sure, but...Kara doesn't complain, and it's easier to come up with a generic male lead than it is for her to think up a unique romantic prospect every single time.

She'd been _planning_ on that, this time. A quick, phoned-in romance of some man the princess had known in her childhood. Easy.

But now that she's here...there's a flicker of eyes in her imagination. Bright blue eyes, and blonde hair.

_ _ _

"Linda."

Kara looks...either intrigued, or confused. Alex ignores the expression, in either case.

"The two of them had been friends," she explains, "when they'd both been children. She wasn't of high birth - the daughter of one of the King's best advisors, yeah, but...still not anyone who a princess should be hanging around with. They'd been close, as children. Running and hiding, sharing secrets, sharing _everything_ together. Until Alex's parents had sent Linda's family away to work as ambassadors in a neighbouring settlement. To strengthen alliances there. Her dad had insisted it was just good business and that they needed royal ambassadors, not just ones linked with Parliament. But Alex always felt like he'd been trying to tear them apart."

Kara gasps, scandalised. 

_Gotcha._ Alex smirks. She knows if she can get Kara to gasp, she's fully engrossed in the story. 

Once she'd got Kara to scream at a surprise twist, which had been _hilarious_ at the time, buuuuuut hadn't been so great when Kara hadn't been able to sleep all night and had kept Alex awake, too. So...gasps were generally what Alex went for, now.

"And now, here she was. In Lexie Grey's workshop. She'd grown up a lot since they'd known each other. She tied her hair back now, more sensible than it used to be. And...with the benefit of distance, the princess could see that Linda had grown into a beautiful young woman. Not that she'd ever have thought that about her childhood friend."

This story...this story is making Alex's stomach flip in odd, uncomfortable ways. Ways she doesn't want to put a name to. Why hadn't she made it a boring boy like normal? Why did she have to go for...this?

" _Lexie Grey?_ , she asked, and any doubts in the princess's mind about her identity flew out of the window. That was definitely her old friend. _I've heard you can create anything that anyone needs, and do it quietly._

" _That depends on what you need and what it's for,_ the princess says, trying to play it cool. Trying to shift her voice a little more than usual. Linda doesn't seem to recognise her, and she knows she needs to keep it that way. But all she can think about is all the late nights, when they made things together. The tinkering, the inventions, the laughter and stolen moments. She doesn't know why she's feeling this way - but she never expected to see Linda again, after all.

" _I need it for my mother, and my town_ Linda says, and that brings the princess back to reality. _Almost everyone in the town is very sick. There's a plant that's been shown to cure the illness, but I need an injector precise enough to deliver exactly the right dose. Even just a tiny amount too much will become lethal, and harm instead of healing._

"It's not an easy request. But...it's exactly the sort of reason the princess started working as Lexie to begin with. It's exactly what she's been waiting for. And...there's no way she could ever refuse Linda. _Of course. If you have the specifications of the medicine, I can start work on it right away._ "

Alex pauses to take a long, slow breath. She's been talking for a long while, and Kara hasn't said a thing.

Kara shifts a little, and Alex has a moment of hesitation. 

"...Are you even awake right now?"

"Yes! I was engrossed in the story! Why did you stop?"

"Because I thought you were asleep!"

Kara makes an affronted noise and burrows closer against her sister. "When have I ever fallen asleep during one of your stories?"

"Would you like the list based on date, time, or which stories you missed?"

" _Pedantic_ ," Kara reiterates.

Alex's phone buzzes, and Alex pauses her storytelling to check it.

It's from Brad. Ugh. Gross. She tries not to think about him much, ever since the debacle at Valentine's.

There's a party tonight, and...Vicki's going to be there. Alex freezes.

"Everything alright?" Kara asks.

_ _ _

Josie had been Alex's best friend, but... but things with Vicki had been different. Warmer, somehow. Alex had figured it was because she'd known Josie since they were kids, but she only met Vicki as a teenager.

But now...they haven't spoken in a couple of weeks, and Alex doesn't know why she's done that. She's been pulling back, pulling away from Vicki. Everything had been fine, they'd gone for a sleepover...and then Alex had started acting weird.

She knows she's doing it. She knows it. She just...can't stop herself. It's like she's distancing herself from something.

She should go. She should go to the party, and fix up things with Vicki, and apologise for being a crap friend recently. Make an excuse that she's had a lot going on recently, and then smile endearingly and ask _still friends?_

At the very least she should go and get drunk, so she has the option to just keep pretending that everything's fine and keep ignoring everything she's feeling.

She should go.

_ _ _

But Kara's staring at her, concern and love and _hope_ in her eyes. 

"...Yeah," Alex says, flipping her phone closed and putting it back down. "Yeah, everything's good. It wasn't anything important."

Kara grins widely and squeezes Alex close. "Thank Rao. For a second I thought you might run off on me."

"Kara..." Alex wheezes dramatically. "Can't... breathe..."

"Oh!" Kara pulls away, and Alex gasps in breath comically. "I'm so sorry!"

Alex cackles and messes up Kara's hair with her hand. "I'm kidding. Get back here, doofus."

Kara doesn't look fully convinced.

"I'm fine, Kar. I promise."

The reiteration seems to be enough, and Kara flops right back on top of Alex's chest.

"Ow! My delicate boob has been crushed by your gigantic alien head!"

"Suck it up, nerd."

Alex wraps her arms around Kara's waist, holding her close. "It's nice."

Kara looks up at her questioningly.

"It's nice, to be working with Linda again. As it turns out, it takes a lot more work than either of them expected. Prototypes and developments, experiments and failures. All while Linda's mother and town were running out of time."

When Kara recognises that the story is continuing, her eyes light up and she beams.

"Synthesising a medicine from the plants that Linda knows could cure everyone proves to be almost impossible. Pretty soon, the princess is desperate. She even tries filtering it through the blood of a healthy person, but that ends up having too many other complications. But...through all of it, she's working with Linda. And that makes it all okay."

Alex squeezes Kara a little, smiling against her hair.

"Linda's grown, a lot, since they last spoke so many years ago. She's a writer now - publishing under a pseudonym, of course, but a writer all the same. She's talented and bright and every moment they spend together makes the princess remember how fond she was of her. Every moment is a reminder that she's here as Lexie Grey, rather than herself. She wants, more than anything, to tell Linda the truth, but...she can't. It wouldn't be right - not when her town is sick and dying. So...she keeps her secret."

Kara's almost vibrating at the story by this point. "And, as horrible as she feels about Linda's town being in so much trouble, a part of her is the happiest she can remember being just to spend time with her??"

Alex makes an affronted noise. "I was getting to that! Don't steal my thunder!"

"Sorry, sorry! It was a really obvious plot beat, okay."

"Yeah, yeah. _All_ the plot beats here are obvious, Kar. Don't call me out for predictable storytelling."

"I'll call you out for whatever I want to call you out for."

Alex digs a knuckle into Kara's back until she squirms - and until it starts to hurt her knuckle, admittedly.

"Uncle! Uncle!"

"Better." Alex brushes Kara's hair to one side and tries to remember where she was before Kara hijacked the story again. "Okay, so. After a couple of long, hard weeks of work, they have something they think will do the job. A big, cumbersome, steampunk-lookin' injector. It's got like, leather straps and brass gauges and three needles and it goes _ffsss_ when it injects. It's awesome."

"Thank you for telling me how awesome your glorified syringe looks."

"You're welcome. But there's no way of knowing for sure unless they test it. If they've got it wrong, the dose could be too small and the illness might survive - or the dose might be too large, and the princess could be responsible for the death of whoever they test it on first. Linda says that she's explained the dangers to her mother - and that her mother is willing to be the test patient."

Kara tenses up, a little. She doesn't like where this is going - for understandable reasons.

"The princess creates an excuse for her to not be disturbed for a number of days - and bribes her trusted physician to keep others away. He's a good man - someone the princess has relied on for all of the secrets of herself. And so, with her cover preserved...Linda and Lexie travel together to her town. She needs to be there to see. She can't leave it alone, not when she's so close.

"The town would probably be lovely, if it weren't plague-stricken. At least the King really did send Linda's family somewhere nice. They walk into the Ambassador's house, hand in hand. Seeing Linda's mother, after all these years...seeing her look so ill. It haunts the princess."

Kara has tears in her eyes, and Alex tries to rush through the next part. Not Alex's best choice of story topic.

"Linda whispers comforts to her mother - whispers that she'll be okay soon, and that Lexie is here with a medicine that will make her all better. Her mother...doesn't seem to believe it. She's agreed, but...the princess knows she only really agreed to be the test patient. So that if it fails, if it needs to be modified for the rest of the town, she will be the one to die - not anyone else. Not any other innocents.

"The Princess can't allow that to happen. She can't. She can't be the reason Linda's mother dies. She can't take things from Linda. And so, standing there in the middle of the ambassador's bedroom, she lifts the syringe. She stabs it into her own chest, and pushes the plunger down. If anyone's dying from her dosage being wrong, it's going to be her. And that is the last thought she has, before everything goes black."

Kara gasps, in shock and horror. She's enraptured in the story, and absorbed in it.

"She wakes up slowly, with the only thought in her mind being that she doesn't seem to be dead. Well...and also quite a lot of fuzziness and the fact that her limbs don't seem to be obeying right now. But...when she opens her eyes, she sees Linda.

"She's lying in Linda's bed, she thinks. It smells of her, at least. It reminds her of the sleepovers they used to have together. But she's...alive. And Linda is staring down at her, with...the strangest expression on her face. Affection and exasperation and...familiarity?

 _I can't believe you did that_ , she says, and pokes the princess in the needle marks between her ribs. It hurts a little. _I can't believe you were so...so reckless, and stupid, and selfish, and selfless, and...I can't believe you'd risk your life like that! How could you be THAT ridiculous? God, you haven't changed a bit!_ "

Alex's next words are interrupted by Kara _whooping_ loudly. Honest-to-god whooping. Jesus christ. 

Alex laughs. "Okay, I get it, you're excited! Calm down!"

"I will never in my life calm down!!!!"

"That makes her freeze up. _W-what do you mean, I haven't changed a bit?_

"Linda just rolls her eyes, smiling. _The dosage was perfect. Your calculations were perfect - you really didn't need to test it on yourself. But I suppose you've always been stubborn and stupid. You saved the town. You saved my mother...Princess._

"She knows. The Princess freezes, completely. She knows. She's seen through her alter-ego. She knows the great inventor Lexie Grey is really the princess of the kingdom.

" _I knew from the first moment I laid eyes on you,_ she says, and it's softer now. Fonder. _Did you really think that I could ever have forgotten you?_

" _Linda..._ She feels like her childhood best friend is leaning down. Closer and closer. And if she had more control over her body right now, she knows she'd be leaning up."

She feels like she and Kara have gotten closer. She doesn't remember staring into Kara's eyes like this before. She doesn't know when it started, or why, but...they are. Her eyes flick down to Kara's lips.

" _Your Highness,_ she says, smirking. Insufferable and smug and confident as ever.

" _God, I did not miss you calling me that_ , the princess groans.

" _I'll call you anything you desire._ "

They're so close, now. So close. She can see the flecks of colour in Kara's bright, bright blue eyes. All it would take was the slightest of movements, and they'd--

"Their lips meet."

_ _ _

Kara kisses Alex.

She kisses her slowly and carefully, like she's breakable. Alex supposes, technically, she _is_ breakable.

But thinking about her breakability in Kara's hands does strange things to Alex that she's pointedly not thinking about right now because Kara is goddamn kissing her and that's a little bit more important than anything else in the entire universe right now.

Alex makes some sort of noise in her throat that she doesn't think she's ever made before (and part of her questions whether it's a noise humans are actually capable of making if they haven't had three years of education in Kryptonian linguistics) and curves upwards, into the kiss. 

And then, all too soon, it's over.

They both gasp for breath, eyes wide, staring at each other. There's silence in their room, save for their breathing.

Kara just kissed her.

And Alex kissed her back.

That's...that's a lot to take in right now.

"Alex, can I tell you a story?"

She thinks she responds, in some form. But she isn't sure exactly what she says. It might have been a confused noise.

"I want to tell you the story of...the princess who lost her world, and the girl she found who felt like home."

Oh. Alex beams. She doesn't really know how else she's supposed to respond to something like that. She just...beams, and rests her forehead against Kara's.

Kara kisses her again. "There is so much I've wanted to tell you..." she murmurs, against Alex's lips.

"But I haven't finished the story of Linda and Lexie yet," Alex says, just to be petulant.

Kara pulls back, glaring. Her hands find Alex's wrists, and pin them above her head. "And they lived happily ever after." Her tone doesn't particularly allow for any argument.

Alex laughs, and kisses her again.

She kisses her until Kara lets go of her wrists, and lets go of the faux-indignation, and melts against her like they're built to go together.

"Yeah," Alex says. "And then they live happily ever after."


End file.
